اخبار فلسطين – وطن نيوز
فلسطين اليوم – اخبار فلسطين اليوم
W6nnews.com ==== وطن === تاريخ النشر – 2026-04-06 18:11:00
Palestinian Information Center The closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque is no longer a passing security event that can be included among the “emergency measures” that the Israeli occupation used to impose in times of escalation. Rather, it has become a complex indicator of a deeper shift in how the conflict over Jerusalem is managed, and in the nature of the relationship that the occupation seeks to impose with one of the most religiously and politically sensitive sites in the world. The closure, which deprived hundreds of thousands of Muslims of performing prayers, including Friday prayers during the month of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, goes beyond the procedural dimension in its implications to raise questions related to sovereignty, redefining the “status quo,” and the future of Al-Aqsa Mosque in light of troubled regional balances. When the occupation authorities announced the closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque in late February, they linked the decision to the state of emergency resulting from the American-Israeli aggression against Iran. However, the continuation of the closure for more than a month, without any serious indications of its reopening, reveals that the issue is not related to a temporary measure as much as it reflects a tendency to establish a new reality. For the 37th day in a row…the Israeli authorities completely close Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments warns of its continued isolation #Al Jazeera_MyDigital pic.twitter.com/Y06Cog57y7 — Al Jazeera Channel (@AJArabic) April 6, 2026 In readings published by numerous media platforms, it was confirmed that the occupation “is exploiting the regional moment to rearrange control over Jerusalem,” taking advantage of the world’s preoccupation with war, which is a pattern It has previously been repeated at pivotal times, where major crises are exploited to impose gradual changes that are difficult to reverse later. Al-Aqsa from guardianship to control Although Al-Aqsa Mosque has witnessed previous closures, the length of the current closure and the breadth of its scope make it a different case. Even in the most tense periods, the occupation resorted to restricting entry or imposing age restrictions, but it rarely implemented an almost complete and extended closure. According to the Jerusalem Governorate, the mosque has been closed on Fridays five times since the occupation of Jerusalem in 1967: June 9, 1967: two days after the occupation of Jerusalem, when the occupation forces that stormed Al-Aqsa Mosque were still there. July 14, 2017: Following a shooting attack inside, the occupation announced the closure of the mosque and began preparing to impose electronic gates, before being forced to withdraw them two weeks later as a result of the popular uprising. June 13, 2025: When the occupation forces expelled the worshipers and closed Al-Aqsa Mosque in conjunction with the 12-day aggression against Iran. June 20, 2025: Within the previous lockdown. March 6, 2026: On the seventh day of the US-Israeli attack on Iran. Analyzes indicate that “turning the closure into a repeatable tool” represents one of the most dangerous outcomes of the current stage, as it opens the door to its use in the future as a means of pressure or as a mechanism to reset the relationship with the mosque, according to what serves the Israeli vision. On the religious level, the closure cannot be separated from being a direct violation of freedom of worship. The preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque, Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri, expressed this clearly when he said that “closing Al-Aqsa Mosque is not permissible according to Islamic law and cannot be justified by any security pretext,” adding that “preventing Muslims from performing their prayers contradicts the most basic religious rights.” This proposal is not limited to the religious position, but rather intersects with international law that guarantees freedom of worship, which makes the closure, from this perspective, a double violation: religious and legal. One of the most sensitive dimensions of this closure is the concerns it raises regarding the future of the management of Al-Aqsa Mosque. The increasing Israeli intervention, whether through the occupation police or by imposing restrictions, raises questions about the intention to reduce the role of the Islamic Endowments Department, in a preliminary step to impose direct security management on the mosque. Sheikh Sabri says, “There is no justification for closing Al-Aqsa Mosque in this way, and what is happening is a clear attempt to impose control over it and withdraw the powers of the Islamic Endowments, in clear violation of the existing historical and legal situation.” He added, “The continued closure means that the occupation is dealing with Al-Aqsa as being under its absolute sovereignty, and not a place subject to Islamic administration.” A multi-level breach Historically and politically, the legal status of Al-Aqsa Mosque was defined by complex arrangements known as the “status quo,” which regulate the use of the place and guarantee freedom of worship for Muslims. The Geneva Conventions also obligate the occupying power to ensure residents’ access to their places of worship, which makes the continuation of the closure vulnerable to legal criticism, even if it is not translated into practical measures on the ground, according to Wael Awad, a lecturer at Birzeit University. He stresses that the closure raises serious questions about the reasons for closing Al-Aqsa Mosque while other mosques perform prayers regularly. “So why is Al-Aqsa Mosque closed? And why is seclusion in the safe underground Marwani prayer room forbidden?” The political analyst believes that “the closure of Al-Aqsa cannot be separated from a series of previous measures, such as the increasing incursions and the imposition of restrictions on worshipers, which means that we are facing a gradual policy to change the current situation, by imposing field facts and then stabilizing them over time.” Professor of Jerusalem Studies, Abdullah Marouf, defines the status quo agreement as “the status quo remaining as it was in Jerusalem before the occupation,” indicating that many changes have occurred in the agreement since the setback of 1967, as it is no longer applied in particular to Al-Aqsa Mosque. This is evidenced by the fact that a number of settlements were built on the lands of Jerusalem after its occupation, in addition to the complete demolition of the Mughrabi neighborhood, the displacement of its people, and the occupation of the Buraq Wall even though it is an Islamic endowment, in addition to forcefully imposing temporal division, and ensuring the settlers’ prayers in Al-Aqsa Mosque. The occupation also conducted many excavations and opened tunnels in the vicinity of Al-Aqsa Mosque, under the Old City, and around the Jerusalem Wall, causing damage to the archaeological infrastructure and cracking some of Al-Aqsa Mosque’s features. Marouf says: “No one talks about these changes anymore as if they have become a fait accompli and not up for discussion.” Cumulative data extracted from the reports of the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission over the past years show a qualitative shift in the tools of control. Israeli policies in 2022 focused on structural empowerment by allocating huge budgets for structural projects, such as museums and cable trains to surround the Old City. Data indicate that the year 2023 witnessed an escalation in the intensity of the human presence of settlers storming Al-Aqsa Mosque, which paved the way in the period 2024-2025 for the imposition of public Talmudic rituals and severe restrictive measures on the entry of Palestinian worshipers. This progression reflects a persistent effort to model the experience of the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, by transforming the Jewish presence at Al-Aqsa from an emergency intrusion during specific hours of the day into an acquired right protected by the force of Israeli weapons and law, or even a fait accompli and a natural matter. Dismantling the social structure in Jerusalem. The impact of closing Al-Aqsa was not limited to the religious aspect, but rather extended to the social structure in Jerusalem. The mosque constitutes a comprehensive center for daily life, and its absence from the scene practically means the dismantling of one of the most important public spaces for Palestinians. #Urgent | Maariv: Ben Gvir entered Al-Aqsa today and held a meeting to assess the situation with the participation of the police chief and officials – by imposing sovereignty and firmness, we achieve deterrence in Ramadan pic.twitter.com/OuXlf0AJey – Al Jazeera Channel (@AJArabic) February 20, 2026 Writer Ali Ibrahim believes that the sanctities in Jerusalem, especially Al-Aqsa Mosque, do not only represent a religious space for performing rituals, but rather constitute something similar to a “public space” for Palestinians. In the city; That is, the comprehensive space in which the social, cultural and symbolic dimensions intersect. With the isolation of Jerusalem from its surroundings by the wall and barriers, this centralization increased, so that Al-Aqsa became the “beating heart” of the Jerusalemite community and the cornerstone of its cohesion. Within this context, he emphasizes that the closure of Al-Aqsa is not only understood as a ban on prayer, but rather as a direct blow to this structure, through several overlapping paths: a blow to what is known as “existential security,” as the repeated closure creates a state of continuous shock among Jerusalemites, which goes beyond the immediate event to establish a feeling of inability to protect the holy sites, which gradually leads to a state of alienation within the city itself. Al-Maqdisi, according to this perception, is made to feel like a stranger in his most symbolic space. The implicit psychological message that the occupation authorities seek to perpetuate is that the Palestinian presence in Jerusalem is temporary and fragile. This meaning is not said directly, but is constructed through the daily practice of closure and prevention, which fuels a deep collective anxiety linked to the possibility of losing what remains of spatial space, first and foremost the maximum. “The militarization of time and the distortion of collective memory,” as religious seasons, which traditionally constitute moments of restoration of the social fabric and strengthening of solidarity, turn into stations of repression and tension. Instead of the month of Ramadan or the holidays being occasions for joy and solidarity, they are reformulated as times of fear, intrusions, and barriers, which leads to distorting collective memory and weakening the psychological immunity of society in the long term. The fragmentation of the social fabric is one of the most dangerous repercussions, as preventing access to Al-Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher practically means disrupting one of the most important spaces for social encounter. These places were not just religious sites, but meeting points for families and neighborhoods, and centers for the reproduction of social relations. With their closure, neighborhoods are isolated from each other, daily connections are broken down, and society turns into distant, manageable units. The impact does not stop at the direct social dimension, but rather extends to the economic cycle associated with these seasons, where commercial and service activities that depend on the heavy presence of worshipers and visitors are harmed, which deepens the fragility of Jerusalemite society on both the economic and social levels. The closure as a sovereign message Politically, it is difficult to separate the closure from being a sovereign message, as imposing control on Al-Aqsa, even temporarily, carries connotations that go beyond the place itself, reaching the essence of the conflict over Jerusalem. In this context, Ziyad Buhais, a researcher specializing in Jerusalem affairs, believes that what Al-Aqsa Mosque is witnessing in the year 2026 is not just a passing security measure necessitated by the circumstances of the aggression against Iran and its choices, but it is also an act of deliberate war against the mosque, and an embodiment of the policy of temporal and spatial division that the occupation sought through “decades of creeping colonial progression.” Buhais explains that the occupation’s transition from the policies of control, command and control that we witnessed in previous years to a complete and comprehensive closure represents an attempt to break the sovereign symbolism of the Palestinians in Jerusalem, and to transform the Holy Mosque from a comprehensive public space into an isolated and closed military zone according to the Israeli will. He warns that Al-Aqsa is no longer today in the stage of slow progress and preparation for Judaization, but rather the Zionist right has moved to the stage of urgency in reaping results by repeating attempts to slaughter animal sacrifices in the mosque, and reaching the end by exploiting the current war to achieve this.” A position paper published by the Institute for Palestine Studies explains that the remarkable shift in Israeli policy towards Al-Aqsa Mosque was evident in the period 2023-2026, while in Ramadan 2023 it adopted a policy of control The surveillance, which allowed the passage of large crowds while practicing selective repression (securing the entry of settlers and arresting those in seclusion), moved in 2026 to a strategy of complete closure. The paper titled “The Silence of the Minarets: The Rhetoric of Prayer at the Doorstep of Al-Aqsa!”, by researcher Ahmed Ezz El-Din, shows that this shift aims to exploit the exceptional and emergency situation imposed by the regional war with Iran, to pass a new reality in which the issue of opening and closing Al-Aqsa Mosque is controlled as one of the tools for implementing the policies of dividing the mosque. Transforming it from a space and place of worship into a closed military zone subject to Israeli security, military and political management, at a time when Israeli religious and non-religious gatherings are taking place without any restrictions as they are at Al-Aqsa Mosque. The study’s analysis points out that the difference between the years 2023 and 2026 lies in the occupation’s transition from conflict management policies inside the mosque to an attempt to resolve the conflict through complete closure and the application of more serious policies regarding the issue of partition, taking advantage of the war and the state of subjugation and weakness among the war-weary Palestinians. Genocide and Israeli military rule in the Palestinian colonial geography. Estimates confirm that the frequent shifts in the systematic policies followed by the occupation government to impose hegemony and control over Al-Aqsa since the outbreak of the genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, make the future of the closure open to several possibilities. The mosque may be reopened under certain pressure, or the closure may continue in a way that establishes a new reality in which oppression does not accumulate and does not lead to submissiveness and silence as much as it establishes it. For a new stage of confrontation, rebellion, and effectiveness. The battle is no longer about electronic gates or a specific prayer hall, but rather about the essence of existence in the city, its symbols, and its unifying identity, as the researcher Ezz El-Din sees. He says that the current moment leads to the possibility of an explosion, an exit, and breaking the state of monotony and calm, which may take the form of widespread civil disobedience, which will not only be sudden or spontaneous, but also the product of a collective awareness that was formed at the threshold, and whose ink is in the supporting geographies in the reach of the earth. He added, “The silence of the minarets does not mean the silence of the street and its masses. The eloquence of Jerusalem and its rebellion is louder than the sound of gunpowder, war, and genocide.” However, the most dangerous scenario is turning the closure into a repeatable precedent, which practically means redefining the relationship with Al-Aqsa Mosque in the long term. In the end, the closure of Al-Aqsa Mosque cannot be read as an isolated security measure, but rather as part of a broader path that seeks to reshape control over Jerusalem. While the religious, political, and legal dimensions are intertwined in this event, the question remains Open: Are we facing a fleeting moment in the context of war, or are we facing a gradual shift in one of the most sensitive files of the conflict?
